Tag: legislation

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politics State

Self-Policing Lobbyists

Often lost in discussions about ethics legislation and lobbyist influence is the fact that there is a legitimate value that lobbyists can bring to the legislative process. I’m in favor of making solid rules of ethics for legislators and lobbyists without removing lobbyists altogether. With that perspective, I really enjoyed this Deseret News story about a lobbyist who carefully limits the money he spends on legislators.

While some lobbyists often take lawmakers to Utah Jazz games — all good seats are over $50 — or to expensive restaurants, {Paul} Rogers is one of a growing number of lobbyists who works in more modest means, even if they have the wherewithal to spend more on legislators.

“My firm, Tetris, has season Jazz tickets. We use those for ourselves and our families. I’m finding that many legislators don’t want those (more expensive gifts),” Rogers said.

One thing I have always believed is that buying a meal for a legislator as a way to sit down with them is generally a perfectly reasonable “gift” for a lobbyist to give a legislator. If our $50 cap on anonymous gift is encouraging lobbyists and legislators to limit their financial back-scratching to such meals then I am pleased with that rule.

I would not consider this to be sufficient evidence that we do not need any more ethics legislation, but I do see it as a good sign that it is possible to have reasonable restrictions to discourage excessive use of gifts for legislators.

Categories
National politics State

Near-Sighted Legislation

The senate is scheduled to vote today on whether to debate the bill to make two new seats in the House of Representatives and give them to give Utah and D.C. My opinion on this can be found in an editorial at National Review Online (no, I didn’t write it, but it expresses the same position I hold). The one new thing I learned from that article was that the bill does not specify that Utah gets the second seat, but that it would go to “the state that stands next in line to receive a seat through the normal process of apportionment.” (currently Utah) I guess I did know that, but I did not realize the wording.

When I wrote about this issue in July I made much the same argument as NRO and stated that Utah had nothing to gain by pushing for a new representative with so little time before the next census. Representative Chris Cannon (R-Ut) points out that we do have something to gain – money. Sending a new representative earlier gives earlier seniority and allows for more pork money to be sent home from Washington. Unfortunately sending pork money home is exactly the way to buy votes for re-election.

I’m sure this sounds un-American of me but if the purpose of a representative is to send more pork home then we should reduce the size of the house to 250 or less rather than increase its size by 2. What we need in this country is not more money being passed around after filtering through the capitol. This only ties us to greater dependence on the federal government and gives more power to what was supposed to be a relatively weak central governing body.

UPDATE: The bill failed. But Senator Hatch promises to keep pushing for it until we pass his flag burning amendment. If we got him a recording contract in Nashville would he retire from the Senate?

Categories
politics

Fourth Seat for Utah

The bill to give Utah a fourth seat in the House of Representatives has been hanging around for quite some time. It has not had too much coverage lately because very little has been happening with it. Yesterday I was surprised to see two editorials on the issue in Utah newspapers (Deseret News, Daily Herald). What really surprised me was that both editorials were against the bill. Back when this bill was getting more attention I was constantly disappointed that most of the coverage of the issue was supportive of the bill.

The reasons given for opposing the bill are that the other half of the legislation (giving Washington D.C. a voting member of the house) was unconstitutional. As the Deseret News pointed out, the goal of giving D.C. a voting member of the house is not without merit, but it is outside the scope of legislation. The proper way to accomplish this is to change the constitution, or make D.C. a state or part of a state. These are the same arguments I have been making on blog posts and comment boards ever since the issue was first raised. (Surprisingly, I discovered today that I have never talked about it here.)

The Deseret News offers one other reason to oppose the bill – timing. I have always argued that Utah should just wait until we get a new seat – we’re growing much faster than the country as a whole so we’ll gain new seats as the census gets updated. The editorial argues that the time is getting short enough now (only 3 years or less before we get new seats anyway) that Utah has nothing to gain by pushing legislation for a provisional seat in exchange for a (currently unconstitutional) permanent seat for D.C.